The Great Beast

TRUE MAGAZINE GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT OCTOBER 1956 (pages 29-31, 110-120) THE GREAT BEAST. By Daniel P. Mannix Illustrated by William A. Smith For 50 years Aleister Crowley—“the wickedest man alive”—performed sex-magic rites that shocked the world. His spiritual descendants are still practicing today. Isadora Duncan, the dancer, was sitting with another girl at a sidewalk café in Montparnasse when the ladies saw a strange figure approaching. It was a man, well over medium height, clad in a brilliant blue suit with knickerbockers. The man’s head was shaved except for a strip of hair down the center like an Indian’s scalp lock. The man leered at Miss Duncan’s attractive friend. “Have you ever had a serpent’s kiss?” he asked. Before the astonished girl could answer, the man took her hand and bit her wrist, piercing the skin with two teeth which had been filed to sharp points. The girl developed blood poisoning from the bite but subse- quently recovered—which made her luckier than most women who came in contact with this strange man. He was Aleister Crowley, world famous as “The Wickedest Man Alive.” Virtually every woman who became involved with him either committed suicide or went insane. Crowley was a devil worshiper and the last of the great “ceremonial magicians.” A ceremonial magician is one who claims he can invoke demons through such devices as incantations, geometric designs and special magical unguents. At one time or another, Crowley operated an occult society in Sicily, was a Buddhist monk, established several records as a mountain climber and was a famous big-game hunter. He was as remark- able sexually as he was physically and mentally. Some of his followers who still worship him as a sort of supernatural being are practicing today, in America and in Europe. Aleister Crowley was born in Leamington, England, on Octo- ber 12, 1875. His father, a wealthy ex-brewer, was a minister of a religious group called the Plymouth Brethren. Aleister was enormously impressed at his father’s ability to sway crowds and send them into emotional spasms as “the spirit took possession of them.” The boy displayed a passionate interest in religion and read everything on it he could find. There is no doubt that young Aleister was a genius. He could read when he was 4. Two years later, a kindly relative showed the boy how to play chess. After playing one game, the boy was able to beat his instructor. At school, a visiting ex- aminer gave the boys a two-hour test in arithmetic, explaining that no one could possibly answer all the questions in that time. In 20 minutes Aleister placed his finished paper on the table and asked innocently, “Where is the rest of the examination, sir?” He had completed the test without making a mistake. Together with his abnormal brilliance, Aleister had what he later proudly called “an inquiring mind.” Hearing that a cat had nine lives, he declared: “I caught the cat, and having administered a large dose of arsenic, I chloroformed it, hanged it above the gas jet, stabbed it, cut its throat, smashed its skull, and, when it had been pret- ty thoroughly burnt, drowned it and threw it out the window that the fall might remove the ninth life. The operation was successful.” Although the boy took an extreme delight in cruelty, he also had a fierce desire to be the victim. Frequently at school, when the bigger boys were bullying him, Aleister would continually beg, “Be cruel to me, please! Oh, be cruel to me!” When Aleister was still a child, his father died, leaving the boy in the care of his widowed mother and his uncle. Aleister has always respected his father but despised his mother. His uncle was a religious fanatic—no one could mention the word “cab” because cabs were mechanical contrivances and so forbidden by God. When Aleister was discovered reading a book about snakes, his uncle flung the book out the window because it was a snake that has tempted Eve. The boy retaliated by holding his uncle up to ridicule. During a very formal party, Aleister’s uncle, with ponderous humor, asked the boy, “Do you know the names of the two bad kings?” “No, I don’t,” said Aleister. “Smo-King and Drin-King,” said his uncle coyly. After the polite laughter had died down Aleister remarked, “But uncle, you’ve forgotten the third bad king.” “Who is that?” asked his astonished uncle. Aleister told him—and broke up the party. He was beaten until his uncle could no longer wield the cane. At this time, the boy was writing hymns so magnificent they were being sung in churches. He was also reading obscure phi- losophical treatises in Greek and Latin. Aleister was probably tottering on a razor edge between genius and madness. An in- cident at school decided the issue. One of the periodic epidemics of homosexuality that occur in many boys’ schools had broken out and the masters had caught one of the boys involved. The boy was ordered, under threat of whipping, to name his accomplices. The boy named Aleister. Crowley was brought to the headmaster who ordered the boy to confess. Aleister had no idea what he was supposed to confess; The sacrificial cat went wild and proceeded to climb the magician’s frame, while the group continued its chanting. he admitted to a list of ordinary schoolboy sins. He was told that he was lying and the floggings began. The floggings went on for days. Frantic with pain, the boy confessed to every crime of which he had ever heard . in- cluding robbery and murder. Finally the master gave up and had Aleister expelled, sending him home with a note for his mother. When his mother read the letter, she turned on the boy in a frenzy, “You’re not a human being, You’re the Great Beast prophesied in Revelations!” she screamed at him. Instead of being horrified. Aleister was fascinated. He went to the Bible and read in Revelations 13: “And I beheld a beast, and he had two horns like a lamb and he spake as a dragon . and he doeth great wonders . and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had pow- er to do . and his number is six hundred threescore and six.” There is more to the effect that the Beast shall place his mark on his followers and there shall be a Scarlet Woman who is the Beast’s prostitute. The child had long been tortured by agonizing problems, and was unable to understand why he was different from other children. Now his mother’s statement that he was the Great Beast made everything clear. So profound an effect did her re- marks have on the abnormal, brilliant boy that from then on he thought and referred to himself as the Great Beast. As a man, he signed his letters “The Great Beast” or sometimes more simply “666.” He began to worship Satan. He had always had an abnormal interest in the weird, grotesque and supernatural. Now he plunged into the study of the occult with feverish devotion. The boy obtained complex books on the theory of occultism at libra- ries and easily mastered them. He tried desperately to summon up demons. Failing that, he tried to put curses on his uncle, the schoolmasters and everyone else he hated. He had an affair with his uncle’s housemaid on his mother’s bed; primarily to humiliate his mother. Although none of his attempts at magic were successful, the boy felt confident that he needed only more experience or a superior type of incantation to get results. In 1895, Crowley entered Cambridge University. At 21, he inherited a fortune of some 40,000 pounds (about $200,000) from his father’s estate and for the first time in his life Crowley found himself completely independent. His first act was to pur- chase an extensive library—not only on occultism but on poe- try, literature, science, politics, and all the other subjects he had been forbidden to read as a boy. Soon the young man began to exhibit an amazing sexual drive. “Abstinence for even forty-eight hours was impossible,” he wrote. There were no prostitutes in Cambridge and Crowley lamented that he had “to waste uncounted priceless hours in chasing what ought to have been brought to the back door every evening with the milk.” He despised women, and likened his need for them to a drug addict’s need for morphine. He be- lieved they should be kept as slaves, locked up in harems for the use of men, or better yet, simply made public property. Aleister Crowley—sodomist, sadist and satyr supreme. Crowley’s pictures at this time show him as a handsome young man with dark, wavy hair, well over middle height, in- clined to be heavy but in good physical condition. While in college, Crowley also developed a passion for mountain climbing. To Crowley, the more difficult and danger- ous a climb, the better. He began by climbing the chalk cliffs at Beachy Head in southern England. These cliffs are only a few hundred feet high but the crumbling chalk is so unreliable that few climbers care to run the risks involved. Some of the pin- nacles on these cliffs which Crowley climbed alone have probably never been ascended before or since. A.F. Mummery, then considered to be the most outstanding rock-climber in England, climbed on Beachy Head as a member of a trained team and later wrote a book in which he claimed that due to the trea- cherous nature of the chalk, the cliffs were unclimbable except by a series of long traverses.

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